To unfriend, or not, on Facebook

If you read OTE with any regularity you know I have two Facebook profiles — one personal, one professional.

The difference between the two really comes down to my friending style. I’m a whore trollop on one and a nun with a triple-lock chastity belt on the other.

Unless I know you, I’m talking really know you (as in “you were the kid who wet his pants all through elementary school” or “you are the girl whose dad had hairplugs” or “you are one of my bridesmaids”), I don’t accept the request on my personal profile.

My professional profile, well now that’s the place where I welcome everyone — and the profile that I spend a lot more time on these days.

When I made the transition to two profiles (not pages, mind you. I don’t believe in them for “regular” people), I had to do some heavy housekeeping on my personal page. I went through, deleting the “Bethany” whose profile says she graduated from Averill Park the same year I did, yet I’ve never heard of her and certainly don’t recognize her picture and a friend of a friend who I met once — at Coyote Ugly in New York City.

Then I came to Lisa’s name. We weren’t friends anymore, that was certain. But, I wasn’t entirely ready to be closed out of her life. The rational side of me said “cutting ties with someone means cutting your Facebook friendship, too,” but the emotional side of my thinking told me that a connection to her — however small — was a connection to my past. My youth.

28 Responses

I literally went through a complete cleaning of every person I became “friends” with who I had no recollection of, little to no contact of and those that just plain annoyed the hell outta me with their status updates. Literally a week later and half the people I de-friended, friended me back. Some people amaze me.

Sara, you can “hide” status updates from annoying people. I have done that to quite a bit of “friends.” There are only a select group of people who I wonder about and so I read their updates. The others, “hide.” They can still see my updates (unless they hide mine). That way I’m not “unfriending” them. What if I need to stalk them later for some reason?

I don’t unfriend people unless there is a drastic reason to do so, but then again I know almost all of my friends from in person, from projects worked on or from blogging and we just haven’t managed to connect yet.

I think one has to be careful when unfriending someone…are you REALLY ready for that connection to be over? Because once it’s on facebook (or off facebook) it’s real ;-P

On my FB page I befriend everyone unless that person has no information on their page and then I ignore. That usually means it is spam/made up. I haven’t talked to most of these people since grade school but I feel it is cool to be able to see what is going on in their lives. I don’t talk to these people on a regular basis and some I befriended off of someelse’s page for Farmville purposes. Those people and I now have conversations over FB about status updates yet I have never met them. I like to see how people are doing and get ideas of some things I could go out and do. I also have a lot of inside jokes with many of my FB friends.

I have, however, had it clicked on me. One was my ex-wife (she beat me to the punch). The other was my cousin who for some reason was angry that I didn’t call him until a Friday at 8:30am after his daughter was born on a Wednesday at 11:51 pm.

Most of the people I know in my advocacy world are people that I “met” online before I met them in person. When I joined Facebook 21 months ago, most of them were already there before me. Occasionally I will get friend requests from people I’ve never heard of, but who also are friends with my advocate friends. I always add them. I never cut anybody off, even if I never correspond with them directly.

It “feels” good to delete someone if you chose. It doesnt feel good when they do it to you. People can say “it’s only Facebook” but if you look closer it is a very personal choice to delete someone. It’s like finding out from your friends that your GF has dumped you.

I don’t accept anyone’s friend request unless I know them- like knoowww them know them. A friend of a friend who spoke to me for 5 seconds in a bar one night- deny. I don’t need random people knowing my business or looking at my pictures. There are girlfriends of friends, or guys from my past, or b!tches that were snobby to me in highschool that friend me. And I deny them because I know the only reason they are doing so is to stalk my FB and look through all my pics; we aren’t and never were friends in the real world, why pretend on FB that we are? NO thanks!

Ooohh, that sneaky lil’ Lisa. I have the same situation right now, –and I keep thinking that if I remove her from my friends it’ll hurt her feelings and/or she’ll notice and contact me and it’ll be awkward for me to explain. But…truth is, I like seeing her updated pictures…even if I’m not in her life. I guess that makes me sound creepy, though. I should delete her.

Classic, anxious and ambitious but mediocar fool to lead the school, but due to a combination of luck and opportunism, suddenly you and your colleagues for the incredibly strong in field, often political, or media. Each group has its suburbs somewhere NYC. He, is a person of his oldest friends (like you) after a long, long night, if you too tired to hide his anger and disappointment, you are eating. Since your NYC never disappears. REALLY. that the separation of the stairs and you do from your alarm clock paths can cross at weddings, or meetings. If so, you kill to protect. And I hate him forever.

I limit my friends to people I have actually interacted with in the past couple of years through email, phone or in person. I was creeped out that people I haven’t seen since elementary school could look through my travel and wedding photos.

Every now and then I go in and clean up friends. And by clean up, I mean delete. I had so many people from high school that I haven’t seen or talked to SINCE high school. And many of them, I didn’t really interact much DURING high school. So why am I friends with them on facebook?

It was interesting at first seeing what they look like, where they live, and what they do now. But, they’re basically people I do not know and are not really friends.

Yes, we could hide posts from them, but they’d still be able to see everything I post. My privacy levels are set to “only friends”, so why should these people I once knew sorta kinda see all my posts?

I am friended by lots of young women with impressive cleavage who live in exotic places. I don’t know them but I am willing to help them fight the loneliness of the beautiful, because I know exactly how they feel.